Marilyn Todd - Widow's Pique

Why was it, she wondered, when Salome's heart was so obviously made of gold, that Claudia didn't trust her an inch?

Rising cramped and stiff, as much from the effects of the hopscotch as last night's fall, her eye was caught by a small object glinting in the sun. The glint was dull. Barely noticeable. But a souvenir of paradise was not to be sniffed at, she supposed.

Except…

Her stomach lurched. The object in her fingers was no jetsam, no shell, no oddly shaped pebble. It was the unmistakable shape of a flint arrowhead, and her mind flew back to Pula, to the necklace Raspor had worn under his tunic. She'd thought it odd at the time, dismissing it as another aspect of his paranoia, but today, having overheard her escort talking about Perun, the Thunder God, she understood its significance.

The embodiment of victory, justice and peace, Perun protected his people against witches and evil spirits by striking them dead with his spear. In the old days, when Histrian ploughs first started to turn up these flint arrowheads, they'd taken them to be proof of Perun's bolts, carrying these precious thunder stones home to lay under their doorsteps to ensure themselves of his divine protection.

Whatever motives had forced Raspor to abandon his priestly robes, he had not abandoned his god, keeping Perun's holy symbols next to his skin. Obviously dislodged in last night's struggle, this was the first, and possibly only, piece of evidence that Raspor had been attacked, crushing all hope that the little man might still be alive. If Mazares was clever enough to set a trap in which Raspor believed he would be meeting the girl who had the King's ear, and was audacious enough to pull on the noose while the alarm was being raised, then he would not have abandoned his task in the middle!

Oh, Raspor.

Too many, how you say — innocents? — have died and the King, he is too trusting. He thinks only good of people, but there are bad people around him. Very bad.

Another innocent caught up in the struggle, and she had failed him. He'd only wanted to meet her, pass on his information to someone impartial, and through arrogance she had failed him.

I am dead man, if I am seen talking to you.

Can you ever, ever forgive me?

Mazares, he will stop at nothing.

Raspor had been silenced to stop Claudia passing on to the King any details of murders that had been designed to look like accidents. But what killings? What accidents?

She wound her way back to the King's house, barely aware of the sumptuous carvings, the exquisite wall paintings, the elegant rugs on the floor. But once inside her bedroom, she took great care to lock the door and then heave a chest in front for added protection.

First — she ticked them off on her fingers — there was the late King, known as Dol the Just, who had, in Mazares's words, died 'suitably young'.

His successor and oldest son, Brac, was dead a mere three days before his twentieth birthday — but hold on, she owed it to herself and to others to be objective in her appraisal. Fever was no respecter of standing or status, though she made a mental note to find out what had killed Dol and also what exactly ailed the present incumbent of the Histrian throne.

Who else? Well, number three, the King's only son was killed in a hunting accident, and recently, too.

Also, the King was a widower.

Whose only other child, a daughter, drowned not so long ago, when she was twelve.

Then there was the matter of the royal physician. Would a man in such an elevated position really run off with a male lover? The same man, moreover, who was uncle to the child who claimed to have seen Nosferatu? Coincidence could not be ruled out, but there was a limit to how far it stretched, and when you take Dol, Brae, the King's son, the King's wife and his daughter, who had all died before their allotted span, the disappearance of a boat builder and the royal physician seemed highly suspicious. Especially in view of the boat builder's traumatized niece. Add on Raspor's death and, Croesus, we're already up to eight — and these are only the ones I know about!

Like an icy blast from the Arctic, the enormity of the situation slammed home.

No wonder Raspor was terrified. He'd uncovered a campaign to get rid, not just of the King, but to eliminate his entire bloodline.

A campaign so cunning, so stealthy, so utterly cold-blooded in its execution that the conspirators were prepared to wait years to achieve their target, because this way it would not come to Rome's ears.

Hugging her arms tight to her chest, Claudia wondered whether Mazares was in this alone or whether he had allies among the others? His dashing younger brother, for example, or the high priest? And what stand did Pavan take in this matter? Also, there was one more possibility. That they were all in it together. Every last one.

In which case…

She waited until darkness settled over the island, then dressed in the darkest garment she owned. A tunic of Tyrian purple. It was also the most expensive, but this was no time to worry about snagging or rips. Mazares might be keeping her alive as bait to lure the King, who's to say Pavan was of the same persuasion?

Scooping Drusilla under her arm, Claudia pulled her veil over her head and slipped silently out of the house. No door opened behind her. No footsteps rang out in the blackness. Still, she waited outside in the alley, but the only sounds to echo down Rovin's dark streets were an owl hooting from one of the pines and a snore from an open window above. Keeping to the shadows, she ducked this way then that as she worked her way down to the ferry. Between the gems in her pouch and the knife in her hand, Claudia had every confidence in persuading the ferryman to make an out-of-hours trip to the mainland, where this morning's expedition had revealed the location of Salome's stables.

By tomorrow morning, she would be in Pula.

By tomorrow night, the conspirators would be in irons!

Her heart was thumping louder than Perun's thunderbolts when she finally reached the ferry landing, but she need not have worried.

No one was following.

Nobody cared that she'd slipped out of the house.

The ferry's ropes had been cut.

With a contented smile, Nosferatu turned over in bed.

'What a stupendous honour, my dear! Truly, I am so pleased for you!'

Depositing herself with such force that the chair's life expectancy instantly halved, Rosmerta pushed her nose in front of Claudia's. The cosmetics had been applied with a steady, if somewhat generous, hand, but sadly they'd been applied in all the wrong places. She really needed the antimony here, here and here to open her eyes up, and the wine lees on her cheeks should have been extended further along, up and out. As it stood, she resembled a painted doll who'd been running too hard. 'Don't get me wrong, Lady Claudia.'

Rosmerta fluffed out the cuff of her sleeve.

'I've nothing against the way they celebrate Zeltane here, one should always recognize the need for steam to be let off, but I do feel that your being guest of honour will endow the festivities with the dignity and decorum that has been noticeable in the past by its absence.'

Lady Claudia was taking breakfast in the dining hall and trying to come to terms with sitting at a table to eat, rather than reclining sensibly on a couch, when Rosmerta plonked herself down beside her. Lady Claudia pulled off a chunk of warm cheese bread and chewed thoughtfully.

'What's that commotion outside?' she asked.

'Tsk.' Rosmerta helped herself to a honey cake. 'You'd never believe it, but vandals cut our ferry ropes in the night.'

When she shook her head, the wig wobbled so precariously that Claudia primed herself to catch it.

'Mindless it is, absolutely mindless. I mean, what were they thinking of, knowing people will be flooding in from all over for the Spring Festival? Who can possibly think that is amusing?'